Mechanism resulting from technology and having acquired its independence, or organization met randomly of planetary explorations, the Other seems the hero of many accounts of science fiction. In the European literature, one can quote three main novels, having put in scene respectively the extraterrestrial ones (rather eccentric), a robot and a humanoïde.

In full Century of the Lights, Micromégas, philosophical novel written by Voltaire (1752), under cover to treat on a burlesque mode the topic of the relativity of knowledge, present extraterrestrial originating in a planet to us revolving around the Sirius star. Micromégas is a being with the measurement of the world in which he lives: he is a eight miles high giant, whose existence extends on thousands from years. With leaving its adolescence (around 450 years), following a dissension with a religious authority, Micromégas is banished from his planet and undertakes a great intersidereal voyage.

he ends up reaching Saturn and becomes the friend of the secretary of the Academy of this planet, who decides to accompany him in the continuation of his journey. Together the two companions visit Jupiter, Mars and finally the Earth. Arrived on the open ocean Arctic, they meet a ship which returns from an exploration of the polar circle. Seizing the boat in its hand, Micromégas undertakes to communicate with the scientists of the edge, who look like many conscious insects.

With the end of the 19th century, Villiers of Isle-Adam deals with the topic of the automat built with the image of the man, in Eve Future (1886). The Edison scientist, hero of the novel, even succeed in equipping his robot with a heart thanks to a magnetic process.

Lastly, at the beginning of the 20th century, the writer Gustav Meyrink takes again an old Jewish tradition, in his novel Golem, putting in scene a rabbi who succeeds in insufflating the life with a humanoïde composed of clay, using a formula made up of the letters of the hidden name of God. After the disappearance of the rabbi, the Golem, an immortal creature, reappears regularly at the time of tragic events. One cannot prevent oneself from bringing closer this story, resulting from a legend, with the Frankenstein novel, written by Mary Shelley (1817).